Come What May
by watchitstark
Summary: Andy knew how she felt, but she also knew that nothing could come of it. And it hurt.


**Come What May**

Andy had been finding it hard to concentrate during the last few days. Her departure from Runway was imminent, her replacement had been trained and there was almost nothing for her to do but wait out the next few days and clear her desk. It was a task she hadn't been able to bring herself to do yet, she couldn't imagine just wiping away her presence from the halls that she had spent the last year. It had only been a year but so much had changed.

She had changed.

She knew it, she was so much more confidant, so much less naïve. But her attitude hadn't changed, her motivation, her work ethic. She was still Andy, no matter what Nate and Lily had said. She was better, change wasn't always bad. They brunette wished that her friends had seen that before they had left her, before they had abandoned her because she cared for a woman that she couldn't possibly care for. Not that they knew that of course, they could never know that Nate had been right, if only in the way that they had a relationship in her head.

She knew she was in love with Miranda Priestly.

And it cut her up inside.

It would never be reciprocated, she had long ago accepted that, that Miranda cared for her nothing more than a particularly efficient assistant, who in a few days would be leaving her with a unit of two that still wouldn't be as good as she was. They were safe options, nothing like Andy. They wouldn't care for her, they weren't stupid enough to fall her boss. Not like she did. None of them would ever feel the way that she did.

Two more days.

Just two more days and then she would be on her way out of there forever. And Miranda would forget about her while she doubted that she'd ever be able to forget about Miranda. Beth and Jay had been taking over more and more of her jobs so these days she just sat at her desk and answered the phone, watching Miranda as she did, usually. And occasionally jumping up to go to the toilet to cry a little. The crying had surprised her initially, and then she realised that basically, she was going through a break-up. But instead of a real break-up, she was going through a break-up with what she had built up in her head. With what she had been wishing for for all this time.

What she was never going to get.

Oh how she wished that she could just run into that office and disrupt Miranda going over some proofs to shout her love to her, to exclaim the way she felt loudly, her voice reverberating through the glass walls and over the plush carpets.

But she couldn't.

She couldn't expose her love to the woman who regularly cut through her heart with her words; she couldn't open herself up to that kind of heartache. She just couldn't. She could feel the tears coming again and so fled, mumbling something in Jay's general direction and leaving her to man the desk in her absence.

The brunette locked herself in a stall and slumped down onto the toilet lid, hands coming up to cover her face.

This time, the tears wouldn't come.

She sighed and rolled her shoulders, bringing her hands down to pull her phone out of her pocket, when she realised that she had no one she could call, no one to text, no one who could help.

She was alone.

This job had ripped everything from her, including her heart. No one would understand how she felt, her parents weren't happy with her, Doug wasn't happy with her, Nigel was too happy over at the recently opened Men's Runway. And she was here, in a far too sleek bathroom with no one to help her overcome her broken heart.

She didn't even have any ice cream.

She stood slowly, glad that her legs weren't weak and clacked confidently out of the bathroom, shoulders thrown back, ready to face the world.

But not ready to face Miranda.

She didn't think that she'd ever be ready to face her again, not unless she knew that things would be okay, that she could work it out. Not having Miranda in her life was going to break her; it was breaking her heart thinking about it. But she'd get through it, she always got through it. She was stronger than she looked, stronger than the wide-eyed naïve Andy that had strolled through those doors in that hideous outfit. One day she'd be okay, one day she'd get over this whole thing and look back on it and pretend like it was just a crush, just a thing. She'd be happy. Eventually, she would be happy.

Even if it was without Miranda.

She couldn't imagine a future without Miranda, without having her there every day in some capacity. Happiness without Miranda no longer felt like an option, but neither did a future with the enigmatic woman. She was out of options, and her future looked cloudy. Apart from her future career as that had been dealt with by Miranda and she was jetting off to Rolling Stone in few weeks, and she honestly couldn't wait to be doing the job of her dreams. But she could wait to leave Miranda.

She missed her already.

Her heart ached and her mind ached and her limbs ached. She got back to her desk and sat with a full-blown sigh that made Jay look at her, but she didn't say anything. Jay was nice, but a bit stupid and self-centred. She'd been picked for that reason. Andy had hoped that if her replacements were good but not as good as her then she wouldn't be forgotten as quickly as she would have been otherwise.

She knew that she'd been basically forgotten by that point.

She knew that this was it.

She knew that her and Miranda would probably never see each other again.

And it hurt.

It hurt so much.


End file.
